Happy Christmas!

Happy Christmas everyone - hope you all have a wonderful day full of presents and food! We miss you all loads. Lots of love, Lucia and Dave xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Remember those Lindor chocolates...?

We opened them the other night and they were disgusting. Coffee, orange and raspberry flavoured Lindor?? Seriously, the orange ones were just about palatable, but the other two flavours were disgusting. Let this be a lesson to you Lindt, don't mess with a tried and tested formula. Milk chocolate Lindor (maybe the white chocolate ones too) are really the only way to go...

Dave's parents arrive in Sydney

Dave's parents arrived in Sydney on Friday so went to meet them at their hotel on Friday evening for a couple of jetlagged drinks. On Saturday they were due to pick up their campervan so we went with them early in the morning to the rental place - it took quite a while to sort everything out but eventually we were on the road to the campsite that they had booked for two nights. That is an actual picture of their campervan by the way - talk about advertising to the world that you're a tourist!

Despite some dodgy Googlemap directions from Dave's dad we eventually found the campsite. Only 20 minutes or so out of Sydney, it's situated in the Lane Cove National Park which is beautiful - I never even knew it existed until Saturday! Back at our apartment we decided to organise a picnic from David Jones Foodhall (if we could do all our food shopping here, trust me, we would!) at the lounge area by the pool to make the most of the gorgeous weather. We spent the rest of the afternoon splashing around the pool, sunbathing and reading (like most weekends recently) whilst Dave's parents chilled out a bit and got over their jetlag. Saturday evening we went out for a few drinks and a posh curry by Darling Harbour. The photo on the left is the view from the restaurant - beautiful hey?

Sunday was Dave's cousin's birthday (she lives in Sydney) so Dave's mum surprised her by gatecrashing the party. After a few drinks we decided to go for a wander around the Opera House and a drink at the Opera Bar to make the most of the evening sunshine. Then back to our flat for what turned out to be  a delicious BBQ (beef, parmesan and sundried tomato burgers followed by Dave's delectable chicken skewers, various salads and a good bottle of vino bianco). 

A rather exhausting weekend but lovely nonetheless. Dave's parents return on 24th December just in time for the Christmas festivities - that is lots of mince pies, chilled mulled wine and Christmas cake!

THE bread!

Erin the little honey bun got me the bread - the delicious fruity, nutty, cinamonny bread that she sometimes has for lunch. I have a whole loaf of it. I'm going to have to put it in the freezer to ration myself I think. It's been sitting under my desk all day emitting the most yummiest smells - I'm rushing off home now to toast some and slather it in butter. I don't know what I'm going to do when it's finished....it will be a sad, sad day.

Our little Christmas Tree

Our little Christmas Tree is up! I managed to find us a bargain 5ft Christmas tree for $19 so we had a random evening of buying decorations and making our flat look festive. We went for a red and gold theme so all decorations in the flat fit in with that! The Christmas tree itself looked a little sparse so we had to get some tinsel to bulk it out a bit, despite my hatred for the stuff. We also threaded some baubles onto ribbon and have hung them above the sprinklers in our kitchen - probably a massive fire hazard but all for a good cause (that is, making the flat look festive). We even bought little candy canes for the tree, although I found out yesterday that the pig (Dave) came in drunk on Friday night and ate one of them, so now we only have 11 and hence can't count down the 12 days of Christmas. Typical. I downloaded a CD of carols sung by the Kings College, Cambridge Choir too to get us even more in the festive mood! It's just the sun and heat we have to sort out now..and the lack of mulled wine and mince pies.

Dave's embarrassing incident

Last Thursday we decided to do some late night shopping. We were wandering around David Jones Foodhall (posh department store, a bit like Selfridges) looking at all the yummy food and came across a little stall sampling some Christmas puddings. There was no-one there but there were some (closed) tupperwares filled with little bitesize samples of the puddings. Dave was hungry; he decided to go for it. Unfortunately just as he had uncovered the tupperwares, the sales lady returned and looked at Dave incredulously wondering what on earth he was doing. Luckily for him she was quite good natured and actually let us have some more samples. It was so embarrassing though - I can't take him anywhere!!

A lovely chilled out weekend

After an extravagant weekend in Melbourne, we decided this one would be a more chilled out affair. We had a nice lie in on Saturday morning and then made our way to Leichhardt, which is the Italian precinct of Sydney. We had a wander arond the Italian Forum, which is an Italian-style piazza in the middle of Leichhardt with lots of Italian shops and restaurants.

It was completely dead so we decided to walk over to another suburb, Haberfield, which is meant to be quite Italian too. There was a bit more happening here; we found a nice delicatessen and bought lots of Italian meats, cheeses and vegetables (which we devoured for dinner in the evening - delicious) and then we went to a pizzeria called Napoli in Bocca for a spot of lunch. Nice pizza, but not as good as the pizza you get in Teramo near where Daddy is from in Italy.

After lunch I treated myself to an Italian fig biscuit (they're amazing - whenever we used to go to Italy, we used to get them from the local pasticceria). It was delicious, but I was slightly put off by Dave staring at me and wimpering whilst I was eating it - he is still on his diet.

Sunday was another chilled out day - we spent most of it by the pool sunbathing and reading - the little pool and lounge area at our flat really makes it feel like you're on holiday, it's lovely when the weather is good!